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Daughter of former Anchorage Times publisher dies

ANCHORAGE (AP) -- Elaine Atwood, the sole surviving daughter of former Anchorage Times editor and publisher Bob Atwood, died Thursday in Anchorage, according to her family.

Few details were immediately available.

Elaine Atwood worked as assistant publisher of the Anchorage Times until her father sold the paper to Bill Allen in 1990. She made headlines in 1986 after an armed man stormed the Times building and she and her father wrestled him to the ground.

She was a former president of the Anchorage Chamber of Commerce and helped launch the City of Lights campaign in 1985. She and her father received the Governor's Award for public service in 1987.

''She was a very brilliant woman and a magnificent hostess,'' like her mother, Evangeline, said Gloria McCutcheon, a friend of the Atwoods.

Back in the ''golden age of Anchorage,'' Bob and Evangeline Atwood held New Year's Eve parties at their mansion on Atwood Drive, partly as a way to ensure that their two daughters would be safe, McCutcheon said. After the couple passed away, Elaine Atwood kept up the tradition. McCutcheon recalled a fireworks display at her 2000 New Year's Eve party. ''It was beautiful,'' she said.

Elaine Atwood is preceded in death by her father and mother and her sister, Marilyn, who died in 1994 at the age of 59.